October 05, 2012

Bond 1: not stirred

It is the fiftieth anniversary of the first Bond film, Doctor No, and the twenty-third installment, Skyfall, is out this month. Having spent a good fifteen years confidently saying that "of course, the books are much better than the films - grittier, harder...", a couple of years ago I decided to risk those schoolboy memories and re-read Fleming's James Bond novels.

Casino Royale (written 1953) is the one with cards, Le Chiffre's carpet beater upon Bond's British rocks, and Vesper

Live and Let Die (1954) is the one with tarot cards, Solitaire and Mr Big

Moonraker (1955) is the one with more cards, gigantic meals, atomic rockets in Kent and Drax

Diamonds Are Forever (1956) is the one with scorpions, gangsters and trains

From Russia, With Love (1957) is the one with gipsy girls, trains and poison-tipped shoes

Doctor No (1958) is the one with guano, claw hands, Honey Rider and Jamaica.

Goldfinger (1959) is the one with golf, Oddjob and Pussy Galore

"Risico" (1960 in For Your Eyes Only) is the one with drugs and double-crossing

"Quantum of Solace" (1960, in FYEO) is the one with an object lesson in manners and revenge

"The Hildebrand Rarity" (1960, in FYEO) is the cruel one with a sting-ray whip

"From a View to a Kill" (1960, in FYEO) is the one with motorbike couriers and the world's smallest secret lair

"For Your Eyes Only" (1960, in FYEO) is the one with murder and arrow-tipped revenge in Jamaica and Vermont

Thunderball (1960) is the one with atom bombs and underwater fighting in the Caribbean

"Octopussy" (1966, in Octopussy) is the one with spies and Nazi gold

"The Living Daylights" (1966, in O) is the one in which a shaky Bond nearly botches an assassination

"The Property of a Lady" (1967, in O) is the one at an auction

Chapters 1-5 of The Spy Who Loved Me (1962), the terrible one with motels and gangsters

Chapters 1-5 of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963) is the one with allergies, heraldry, skiing and Blofeld

Chapter 6 of The Spy Who Loved Me (1962)

"Reflections in a Carey Cadillac" (1963, retitled by editors as "Agent 007 in New York" and later as "007 in New York" 2002) is the one in which Bond thinks about food constantly

Chapters 7-15 of The Spy Who Loved Me (1962)

Chapters 6-20 of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963)

You Only Live Twice (1964) is the one with sake, diving girls, suits of armour and death wishes

The Man With the Golden Gun (1965) is the one with brainwashing, swamps and challenging property re-investment deals.

If you are short of time, read From Russia, With Love, Doctor No, and Goldfinger; avoid The Spy Who Loved Me and The Man With the Golden Gun.

There are a few interesting themes in the books: the broad nostalgic xenophobia, the (early?) aspirational use of branded consumer goods, the emphasis on looking and optics, Bond's fatalistic tendencies, and his incredible capacity for consumption. They draw a portrait of a figure rather different to the devil-may-care government pirate suavely wise-cracking his way through escapades and confidently hoovering up martinis and beauties that I'd mis-remembered.

Those first themes - nostalgia, xenophobia and impotent aspiration - are covered very well by Simon Winder's The Man Who Saved Britain (2006). He describes the post-war Britain into which the books were published in the Fifties and Sixties, and the role they played. In short, they offered relief and escapism to a hollowed-out, knackered Britain which yearned without relief for a confident Imperial past.

The books are obviously illiberal, misogynist and racist, though this settled, as my reading through the series progressed, into a more generalised xenophobic misanthropy. (That, or I just became re-programmed by the books. Not that my swarthy Italian readers will be able to tell, damn their inscrutable Japanese eyes. Etc.) And despite Fleming's obvious love of travel - you could easily imagine Bond as a columnist for Monocle, sampling the best Scandinavian cocktails and Austro-Haitian hollow-point ammunition - the books are fundamentally socio-politically isolationist and fearful. Whatever happened to our Great Britain?, they weakly thunder.

(Books cited by initial and page number in the UK paperback editions of 2002, eg YOLT101.)